Indeed! This Iraq-born woman had proven her saying by handling more than 950 projects in more than 44 countries with offices in four countries outside the UK. Well-known as an architect who constantly pushes the limitations of architecture and urban design, her work experiments with new threedimensional concepts exaggerating existing urban landscapes and encircling all fields of design. She entered the history of architectural design with a fame spread enormously throughout the world.
Her path was not straight and easy; it was wobbly, narrow and full with challenges. She has gone to a lot of effort and expense to be what she is now. She passed through desperate times, she flopped and she thrived. She was the first woman and Muslim to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize, architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize and the first woman and Muslim to earn the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize. She ranked 69th on the Forbes list of ‘The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women’ in 2008.
Born in Baghdad Iraq in 1950, Zaha Hadid began her college studies in the field of mathematics at the American University in Beirut. In 1972 she moved to London to study architecture at the Architectural Association (AA). She joined the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) upon her graduation in 1977. Together with OMA collaborators Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, she also taught at the Architectural Association.
She began her own practice in London in 1980 and won the prestigious competition for the Hong Kong Peak Club, a leisure nd recreational center in 1983, with a project of spectacular confidence, bold and uniqueness. Painting and drawing, especially in her early period, are important techniques of investigation for her design work. Ever since her 1983 showcase at the Architectural Association in London, her architectural design works has been publicized in exhibitions worldwide and several of her works are held in major museum collections. She formed and established Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) in 1980.
Her firm has gone to create internationally praised awardwinning architectural designs around the world. Zaha Hadid was appointed to teach in a number of institutions. In 1994 she was part of the academic teaching group in three different institutions in the United States: the Kenzo Tange Chair at Harvard University’s School of Design, University of Illinois’s School of Architecture, the Sullivan Chair, and the Master Studio at Columbia University. Since then, the prominent University for Applied Arts has appointed her as professor in Vienna, Austria in the year 2001.
As an Arab, Muslim woman and Britain based architect, Zaha Hadid’s works are a mixture of the culture, identity of Iraq and the neo-futuristic design element. This could be seen through her works since early periods in which she designed between the fragments thoughts of supremacist, deconstructivism, and the fluidity of Arabic calligraphy. Another important feature of Zaha Hadid’s concept is her attention in the rough interface between architecture, landscape and geology as she integrates natural and human-made systems that lead her to experiment with video, digital imaging and physical modeling.
Such process often results in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms molded by the realities of site and building requirements. She combines her early experiences and inspiration from nature and combines them with technology to create a modern neofuturistic architectural design. During the 90s it had been broadly assumed that her complicated designs and images could only be computer-assisted. As a result she was identified as cold and mechanical type of architect and designer.
According to Zaha Hadid, everything was hand-drawn and her office technology consisted of nothing advanced in terms of computer-aided software and technology. In the last years she and her right-hand man Patrik Schumacher exploited to the full the ability of advanced software to visualize and portray shapes beyond the perception of the human mind and hand. Despite the amount of awards she has received, Zaha Hadid was no stranger to controversy. She often faced condemnation for extravagant developments that risen over budget or were funded by states with debatable human rights records.
Many other architects have designed buildings in countries with upsetting human rights records, but somehow there was a feel that Hadid was keener to make agreements than most. Her most troubled project was the Al Wakrah Stadium in Qatar, for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It was increasingly clear that the Qatari government was treating construction workers like slaves, Hadid criticized against those who brought the allegations to her. Confronted with the fact that nearly 1,000 workers had died in other projects related to FIFA World Cup construction, Zaha Hadid said,
Another two widely known troubled-projects from her was the design for the London Olympics Aquatic Centre, which suffered cost overruns, and her concepts for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Stadium was cancelled due to increasing costs and local objections. Zaha Hadid will fairly go down in history for the remarkable mark she made on architectural design, but buildings was not the only things she designed. For the majority of her career, she worked at smaller scales such as painting, furniture design, or some other venture.
Her interest in the expanded field of design, including interiors and the objects that fill them, continued throughout her career. For some, this work indicates a crass and unapologetic commercialism. The British architect has an estimated net worth of $215 million and that made her the highest-paid architect in the world. She be indebted her wealth not only from her architecture works, but also to smart stock investments, extensive property holdings, and profitable endorsement deals with Cover Girl cosmetics.
She also owns several restaurants called the “Fat Hadid Burger” chain located majorly in London, a Football Team called the “Baghdad Angels”, her own brand of Vodka (Pure Wonder Hadid), a perfume (With Love from Zaha) and her own fashion line (Zaha Hadid Seduction). On 31st March 2016, Zaha Hadid left a dark hole in the world of architectural design. She died at the age of 65, with several major projects are still ongoing such as the 2022 Qatar World Cup Al Wakrah Stadium and a new airport terminal located in Beijing.
The architecture of today is produced by an eager generation of innovation and creation; Zaha Hadid is at the forefront of them. Her manipulation in employing contradictory techniques resulted in the emergence of new globally kind of architecture that is friendly and lovely to people. Her willingness to keep up with everything new makes her always in the lead thus inspiring younger generation of architects and designers. Her influences in the design and built environment may be mixed, but they are undisputable.
